1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of wireless communications.
2. Background Art
Wireless access points, such as wireless routers, are associated with a media access control (MAC) address. Certain location databases exist that store the location of a wireless access point and the MAC address of the wireless access point. Such location databases may be used by mobile telephones and other handheld devices for location based services. For example, if GPS is unavailable for some reason, a mobile telephone may use assisted GPS technologies (A-GPS) to approximate the location of the mobile telephone. Such A-GPS technologies use Wi-Fi to determine one or more closest access points, determine the MAC address of the access points, and look up the location of the access points in a location database.